Wednesday, January 20, 2010

A Working Mom's Lot of Leisure (with thanks to The Washington Post)

Work Wednesday

On Sunday morning, my husband "let" me sleep in. Until the late-for-my-current-life hour of 9:15. Even better, the kids were busy playing together in the sunroom so I had some time to read the newspaper. And, best of all, my husband had already made the coffee. A full pot of strong coffee.

I leaped in. Maybe this article would clue me in on my own time crunch. Give me the magic formula to reframe my schedule. But the title of the WaPo piece turned out to tell me all I needed to know: The author's time was split like an ever-dividing mother plant cell. Not into two daughter cells (as in mitosis). But into a job cell and a kids cell that frequently (and frustratingly) overlapped. Schulte writes, "At work, I arrange carpools to band practice and ballet. At home, I write e-mails, and do interviews and research for work." Nothing surprising here.

But I read on anyway.

In the article, Schulte, a Post staff writer and a mom, tries to figure out - in a witty and well written way - why she always feels so time-starved. And whether, as John Robinson, a prominent University of Maryland sociologist and time-use expert, tells her, she really has 30 hours of leisure in her week. (That's not a typo. That's thirty hours!)

Along the way, she meets some interesting characters, weaves in some revealing statistics, and highlights attitudinal changes about "busy-ness" and about child-rearing that have an impact on working moms. And exposes her own internal and external conflicts between career and kids.

Schulte’s description of her life (“The unfolded laundry in the upstairs hallway rises like the Matterhorn.”) struck a chord with me. Even though I wondered where Schulte’s husband (who she mentioned only once in connection with cigar smoking) was in all this. (Turns out, as Schulte said in an online chat yesterday, that her husband does do a lot of family stuff.) And whether she really needed to be cleaning out her kids' closets or worrying obsessively.

So, does Schulte actually have 30 hours of leisure each week? Sort of. But not really. Well, no. Sigh.

After consulting with Robinson and other experts, including a labor economist with four kids of her own, Schulte actually did find about 28 hours of so-called leisure time in her average week. Composed of "6.25 hours watching movies and Saturday Night Live on TV, six hours reading, 5.75 hours exercising and 5.4 hours mucking around on the computer.”

But not much of that leisure time actually felt leisurely. Not the exercise! And certainly not the hours multi-tasking or worrying and planning while engaging in a purported leisure activity. (This is called “contaminated time.”) And not even the time spent with the kids, which Schulte obviously covets.

All this led me to assess my own lot of leisure. I, like Schulte and most moms, laugh (well, it's more of a snicker or a snort) at the idea of 30 hours a week. But maybe I have more than I think. And what is leisure anyway?

Turns out, that lots of people have thought about leisure. What it is. What it isn’t. And there's no universal idea. Everyone seems to agree, though, that, at its core, leisure is not paid or unpaid work activity.

There are those like Robinson, the time-use sociologist quoted in Schulte’s article, that essentially count any time that doesn’t fall into a traditional category like paid work, child care, housework, food preparation and cleanup, etc. Leading Robinson to code the time that Schulte spent waiting for a truck to tow away her broken down car as leisure. This, by the way, is the approach of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Study. The one that keeps telling us that we have more leisure time than we think. The numbers are fascinating, though - after sleeping, and working, the third biggest time use category - ahead of socializing, volunteering, or basically anything else - is watching television. No wonder the experts keep telling Americans that their perceptions of their amount of leisure time are wrong. (And check out Tables 9 and 10 on time spent caring for household children under 18.)

And then there are others who espouse an idea of leisure that goes way beyond non-work or even scattered spare moments. They conceptualize leisure as truly discretionary time. Time spent refreshing the body, restoring the soul, and recharging the mind. Here's one idea from a collection of concepts of leisure from the School of and Leisure, Sport, and Tourism at the University of Technology Sydney that I kind of like (Note that I’ve changed “his” to “her”in the quote):

Leisure is activity - apart from the obligations of work, family, and society - to which the individual turns, at will, for either relaxation, diversion, or broadening her knowledge and her spontaneous social participation, the free exercise of her creative capacity.

Unfortunately, while I like the perspective, I can't quite picture how this idea of leisure plays out in my life. It certainly wouldn't include the 15 minutes or so I get to read standing on the metro during my morning commute. Or the 10 minutes of gabbing with another parent while waiting to drive my kids home from their gymnastics' studio.

But wait! It would include writing this blog! An entirely discretionary exercise in creative expression. (At least I hope so.) And I spent a lot of time thinking about and writing my post this week. Of course, mostly around midnight or so. Still, I've found my leisure time! Thanks, Brigid, for helping me track down this elusive element of my life.

Comments

A working mom's leisure is extremely limited. The tradeoff I've been making the last year is less sleep for more "leisure" (reading books, watching movies or t.v. after the kids go to bed) but one of my New Year's resolutions was to pick sleep instead of t.v., movies and books more frequently so I will feel better. I do count my 15 minutes of reading on BART as "my" time and sometimes wish my train ride was longer. Fundamentally, it's hard to have "quality" leisure time when your leisure time is after a work day and the kids go to bed. I admire your energy to write this blog. (This was written at work, of course!)

I am so glad you blogged about that article! I read it last night (during a rare few moments of apparent leisure after dinner), and I've been thinking about it a lot since then.

IMHO, a fundamental problem is that pretty much all of my leisure time is contaminated by a sense that I "should" be doing something else, instead of whatever it is that I'm doing. Other than dedicated family time (ideally with both kids), almost every moment of that 30 (???) hours of leisure comes with some guilt -- or, at least, a feeling of conflict. So, maybe part of the solution is to try harder to live in the moment.

Another fundamental problem is that most working moms (dads too, but especially moms) try to create more leisure time by sacrificing sleep, leaving us chronically and unhealthily sleep-deprived. As a result, even when I do carve out leisure time, I'm often too tired to truly enjoy it. (The example in the WP article was reading the same paragraph each night, making no progress in a book -- yep, that's me.)

I find it very frustrating that people, women in particular, continually complain about not having leisure time. Life is about making choices- to have kids or not, to watch TV or not, to go to bed early or not, to work full time or not, to volunteer at your child's school or not. All about making choices...quit complaining and be thankful that you have the opportunities to do the things you "choose" to do. Yes raising a family is exhausting- but it is whether you work outside the home or not. Women have always risen to the challenge of raising our families and being there 24/7 for them. I do not find that a negative but rather a positive in my life. I enjoyed my children as they grew up, worked jobs around their schedules so that I could be a part of their lives and am extremely thankful for the opportunity. That meant taking jobs worth less pay wise frequently, but what I received was worth more than any salary. Quit complaining and start appreciating life- you will have a lot more time after your children are grown, and then you will wish for the days of their youth when you got to be such an important part of their lives on a daily basis.

Thanks for all these comments. Tara, I agree with you about trying harder to live in the moment and enjoy fully the time you spend at work and the time you spend with your family. And, Jamie, sorry, but I think we do all need to sleep more! Vicki, I'm saddened that you viewed this blog as one big complaint. It's not - it's more of a comment on the way life is. Yes, I'd like more leisure time -especially time for myself. But I am cognizant of the choices I've made and grateful for my full life, especially for my husband and children.

Thanks for tackling this subject. I think it took me until my first baby was 2 years old to think that I "deserved" leisure time. But now I feel no guilt when I take time for myself away from my kids or family -- I realize that I am a better mom and wife because of it. Of course, as Stacy said, what I choose to do with that free time may not seem leisurely to everyone (going to a singing rehearsal or book group or working out) and I admit that sometimes it involves watching TV while folding the laundry. That's one of my favorite activities - enjoyable and almost meditative to put clothes in order - even though Robinson would likely classify it as housework.

Oh, and check out Brigid Schulte's piece in the Post's Story Lab today about where her husband fits in. Very interesting. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/story-lab/2010/01/when_the_writer_becomes_the_su.html